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12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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Refuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum ofModern Art – picture feastPosted on 20/12/2013
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Lalla Essaydi’s exhibition at the Baku Museum of Art,Azerbaijan, interweaves African and Middle Easterncultures.
The Baku Museum of Art in Azerbaijan is holding New York-basedMoroccan artist Lalla Essaydi’s solo exhibition (from 14 November2013 to 14 January 2014). The artist personifies the strengtheninglinks between the Middle Eastern and African art scenes, amidstgrowing cultural exchange between regions.
Lalla Essaydi, ‘Bullets Revisited #21′, 2012. Lalla Essaydi, ‘Les Femmes du Maroc Fumee d’Ambre Gris’,2008. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, Baku Museum of Modern Art, 14 November 2013 – 14
January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
On 14 November 2013, Azerbaijan’s Baku Museum of Modern Artlaunched “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”. Curated by DinaNasser-Khadivi, the show follows the artist’s recent retrospective at
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12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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the Smithsonian Museum of African Art (2012-13) inWashington D.C. The Baku exhibition is part of a programme ofinternational art exhibitions facilitated by Azeri non-profit artorganisation YARAT. The show features works from the artist’svarious series, including Converging Territories (2002-2004), LesFemmes du Maroc (2005-2008), Harem (2009) and Bullets (2009).
Curator Dina Nasser-Khadivi, in the press release, describes theartist as bridging various perceived binaries:
Essaydi is a remarkable international artist; shenavigates pervasive cultural and aesthetic dichotomiesto make something wholly original – East and West,Tradition and Modernity and the changing perceptionsof women.
Lalla Essaydi, ‘Harem #18′, 2009. Lalla Essaydi, ‘Les Femmes du Maroc Fumee d’Ambre Gris’, 2008. “Lalla Essaydi:Beyond Time and Beauty”, Baku Museum of Modern Art, 14 November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the
artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Weaving multiple cultural references
New York-based Lalla Essaydi is the personification of amulticultural identity: she was raised in Morocco, spent many yearsin Saudi Arabia and was educated in Europe and the United States.The artist creates photographic, mixed media and installation worksthat re-examine Orientalist cultural and gender stereotypes, Islamiciconography and the perception of Middle Eastern women. Essayditalks in her website statement about how she felt the need todocument actual spaces from her childhood: “my work is hauntedby space, actual and metaphorical, remembered andconstructed.”
12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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Lalla Essaydi, ‘Harem #10′, 2009. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, Baku Museum of Modern Art,14 November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
In her own words, Essaydi explains her art in two sentences:
In my art, I wish to present myself through multiplelenses – as artist, as Moroccan, as traditionalist, asLiberal, as Muslim. In short, I invite viewers to resiststereotypes.
Lalla Essaydi, ‘Harem #31ab’, 2009. ”Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, Baku Museum of Modern Art, 14November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
Harems, calligraphy and Orientalism
12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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“The Converging Territories” series of photographs depicts Islamicwomen and children in an unoccupied house where Essaydi wasonce confined when she was disobedient as a child. Veiled andblending with their environment, the women give a sense of stifledsilence, invisibility and entrapment.
Lalla Essaydi, ‘Les Femmes du Maroc Fumee d’Ambre Gris’, 2008. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time andBeauty”, Baku Museum of Modern Art, 14 November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist
and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.
In Les Femmes du Maroc, the artist explores the function of the veilin Islam. The women in this series are covered head to toe inIslamic calligraphy, as are their robes and the surrounding interiors.The henna decoration has an extremely feminine connotation andmarks the most significant and (sometimes) happiest moments inan Islamic woman’s life, such as weddings. The Islamic art ofcalligraphy, on the other hand, is male-dominated. In thephotographs, the dense black writing that pervades the whole sceneseems to entrap the women, like the controlling pressure exerted bymen in Arab culture.
12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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Lalla Essaydi, ‘Harem revisited #47a’, 2013, detail. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, BakuMuseum of Modern Art, 14 November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edwynn
Houk Gallery, New York.
In Harem (2009), the women in her photos are portrayed in aformer harem in Morocco. Her subjects, clad in flowing kaftansdecorated with patterns echoing those of the harem’s tiles, blendwith the architecture like decorative motifs. The harem is a privateportion of the house, meant to accommodate the everyday life ofthe family’s female members and prevent encounters with malestrangers. These odalisques, which Orientalism stereotypes asromantic and exotic, here literally become what the word in factmeans: in Turkish, odalisque means “to belong to a place.” Thewomen appear as collectible items in a male’s cabinet of curiosities.
12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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Lalla Essaydi, ‘Harem revisited #47b’, 2013, detail. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, BakuMuseum of Modern Art, 14 November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edwynn
Houk Gallery, New York.
All of Essaydi’s subjects are adorned with henna calligraphy. TheSmithsonian’s website for her 2013 retrospective identifies herhenna writing as “a delicate act of defiance. It provides a voice,upsetting the silence of confinement and the limitations womenface.”
In the press release for her exhibition in London at KashyaHildebrand Gallery (24 October – 8 December 2013), the artistsays about her use of henna calligraphy:
By reclaiming the rich tradition of calligraphy andinterweaving it with the traditionally female art ofhenna, I have been able to express, and yet, inanother sense, dissolve the contradictions I haveencountered in my culture: between hierarchy andfluidity, between public and private space, betweenthe richness and the confining aspects of Islamictraditions.
12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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Lalla Essaydi, ‘Harem revisited #47c’, 2013, detail. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, BakuMuseum of Modern Art, 14 November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edwynn
Houk Gallery, New York.
Shimmering gold, bullets and concealed violence
In her series of photographs titled Bullets, the women are adornedin shimmering, golden fabrics and metallic materials, surrounded byequally dazzling mosaic backgrounds. The photos, lit by an aura ofapparent luxury, wealth and elegance, hide a surprise. Everyshimmering item is made of carefully cut and polished bulletcasings. The artist juxtaposes deadly violent objects fromcontemporary society with dreamy classical scenes, commenting onthe hidden violence inherent in women’s fate in Islamic culture.
12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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Lalla Essaydi, ‘Bullets Revisited #8′, 2012. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, Baku Museum of Modern Art, 14November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edywnn Houk Gallery, New York.
Strengthening ties between Middle East, Africa and Asia
This year has seen a growing interest in strengthening cultural tiesacross regions, between Middle East, Africa and Asia. TheSmithsonian’s National Museum of African Art announced on 26November 2013 that it received a donation of USD1.8 millionfrom the Sultanate of Oman, the largest in the museum’s fiftyyears history. The donation promotes cultural collaboration betweenOman and West African countries, facilitated by the Sultan QaboosCultural Center in Washington D.C.
12/26/13 11:52 AMRefuting Orientalism: Lalla Essaydi at Baku Museum of Modern Art – picture feast | Art Radar Asia
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Lalla Essaydi, ‘Bullets #3′, 2009. “Lalla Essaydi: Beyond Time and Beauty”, Baku Museum of Modern Art,14 November 2013 – 14 January 2014. Image courtesy the artist and Edywnn Houk Gallery, New York.
The 2013 edition of Art Dubai fair saw “Marker”, an exhibition ofcurated booths, focusing on art from five West Africancountries that highlighted historical and cultural links between thecountries and Dubai. Next year’s “Marker” will see a focus onCentral Asian art, curated by Central Asian collective Slavs andTatars. The ME.NA.SA.ART fair in Beirut, which focuses on MiddleEastern, African and South Asian art, announced this year that it willlaunch a new edition in Singapore in November 2014. A show ofArab art at the Singapore Art Museum in June-September2013 marked the first time that Arab art has been the focus of amajor exhibition in Southeast Asia.
C. A. Xuan Mai Ardia
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Related topics: African artists, Middle Eastern artists, Arabartists, women power, photography, museum shows, picturefeasts
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This entry was posted in African, Museum shows, Photography, Picture feasts, West Asian, Women powerand tagged Baku Museum of Modern Art, Lalla Essaydi, Mai Ardia, Smithsonian National Museum ofAfrican Art. Bookmark the permalink.